Mutatio
by love comes and goes
Summary: AU. The fight at the bridge lasts a little longer, Naruto loses focus, and things don't go according to plan.  Haku makes a mistake and Naruto has to pay for it- with his voice.
1. Chapter 1

Sasuke was slowing down and Naruto, though he still had plenty of energy, had no means of using it.

They were trapped.

Naruto growled and created more clones before they too were quickly disposed of.

"We need a _plan_." Sasuke hissed as he removed the senbon from his arm.

"I'm working on it!" Naruto yelled back, a bit hysteric. It seemed the masked nin was giving them a moment of reprieve but not even Naruto was about to keep his eyes off the block of ice that the mist ninja was residing in... for the moment.

Before they could regroup, another round of senbon hailed on them. They hit non-vital parts but for Naruto it was suddenly a lot harder to use his left arm. He shook it, ignoring the discomfort and glancing over at Sasuke to see that he looked even more tired than before and judging by the amount of senbon that littered the floor meant that he was dodging a lot more than Naruto was.

Naruto was annoyed that he wasn't deemed the bigger threat but let slide for the moment.

They had been the dome of ice for at least twenty minutes and it was obvious that they were being toyed with. He strained his hearing but there was no sign of the other battle that Naruto knew was going on.

Stupid elite ninja.

Distracted, he didn't hear Sasuke's shout of warning but he did snap to attention when he was suddenly pushed away. He hadn't dropped his guard so he resisted, thinking it was Haku. What happened next was completely unexpected.

"No!" The masked ninja called out.

Naruto blinked and realized it was Sasuke who had pushed him and that it had been to save him from the projectiles headed his way.

But Naruto realized it too late.

A senbon embedded itself deep into his throat and his hands reflexively headed to his neck. Unfortunately, three more senbon entered his heart... and only went deeper when he collapsed onto the ground, the senbon from his throat tapping his spinal cord, paralyzing him.

"Naruto!" Sasuke yelled, his eyes widening.

Naruto heard nothing of his teammate's cries as he choked on his blood and struggled to breathe, unable to keep the panic from has gurgled breaths.

_No! I-I can't die here!_

_**Stupid human flesh bag! Such a **_**weak****_ vessel!_**

A flood of heat erupted from his stomach but before he could question it, he passed out from the blood loss.

* * *

He was floating.

It was an odd disconnected sense of being. There was nothing, he was nothing... just nothing.

He was adrift for a long time, that he knew for sure, and normally he would have tried to investigate what was going on but he couldn't feel anything but tired.

Slowly, an oppressive feeling began to flood into his tired tranquility.

_**Stupid... human... delicate... heart...**_

They were muddled words that Naruto was barely able to understand. But as they grew clearer, a hint of... red(?) something began to flood his vision and the tired floating feeling became heavier, like he was underwater.

The red began to get closer to him or he was getting closer to it? His half lidded eyes blinked a few times and he began to feel more aware and confused as the red substance – chakra? – began to recede, like it was looking somewhere else.

Naruto panicked and reached for it.

"_**Looks like your not as weak as I thought..."**_

Naruto winced at the loud booming voice and shook his head to ward off the resulting headache. It made him dizzy for a moment but when his vision aligned itself, he was suddenly facing a gate, and was sitting crosslegged on the floor.

"Where- where am I?" Naruto asked, his voice oddly clear. He expected his voice to be hoarse for some reason. In fact, he expected to be hurting all over. Why was that?

"_**This, you insolant brat, is your mindscape and my prison." **_Kyuubi said, closing his snout with a loud clang.

"Prison? Why am I here?" Naruto tried to think but it just made his raging headache grow worse and he cried out, clutching his head. A pang of phantom pain resonated from his throat and he clutched at it before realizing that it was fine and that the motion was wasted.

"_**I can't fix it." **_Kyuubi murmured, his irritation growing as he pulled his chakra behind the seal. If he tried messing with the thing too much, he might destroy it completely.

"What the hell is going on!" Naruto yelled, his hands went to his temples and he rubbed at them, hoping it would alleviate the pain of the headache.

"_**You were injured cretin."**_ The Kyuubi boomed, annoyed that he had to explain. **_"The deadly needles penetrated your throat and your heart rendering you useless – I, Kyuubi, took over."_**

"Kyuubi... Deadly needles...?" Naruto focused, regardless of the pain in his head and with another painful flash remembered the fight at the bridge.

"Am I... dead?" Even as he asked, he knew that coudn't be the case.

**"_You're alive." _**Kyuubi paused before continuing. **_"You won't be able to do extrenuating things but I managed to salvage your heart and fix your spinal cord."_**

"Fix my spinal cord?"

"_**The needle went passed your throat and voice box and hit your spinal cord, you lummox."**_

"And thats bad?"

"_**Ignoring the amount of bloodloss from your throat and damage to the chambers in your heart which should have killed you, you would have been paralyzed from the neck down." **_Kyuubi said with disgust. His host was such a benighted dullard.

Naruto was quiet, absorbing the extent of his injuries before letting out a thankful sigh. He would live.

"How do I wake up?"

"_**Don't bother me with useless constituents. However, I was unable to fix one thing."**_ Kyuubi admitted with a grumble, it wasn't every day that the great Nine-Tailed Fox was unable to do something.

"What- what was that?" Naruto asked meakly.

"_**Your voice box."**_

Having done one failure in a dozen years (the last one being underestimating the blonde's sire) was enough for him and seeing the blonde clone was enough to anger him. So he stepped away from the seal and used his chakra to jolt the little human – enough to rise him out of his subconscous.

And just like that he was left to cogitate over his apparent inablity to fix something so simple – alone.

* * *

Naruto woke with a silent gasp and he sat up despite his body _screaming_ at him to not move an inch.

"Naruto!"

Naruto blinked a few times before slowly turning to notice that his team was by his side with an aura of distress pushing up against him.

Naruto opened his mouth but when he tried to say something the only noise that came out was some odd chortling noise that hurt his throat. He grimaced and tried again.

Nothing came out.

"...You can't talk." Kakashi stated grimly. Feiging nonchalance was out of the question and he couldn't muster up the discipline to do so. He'd let one of his own get hurt and there was nothing he could do about it. The fact of the matter was that they were lucky that he was alive from what Sasuke had described to him.

"N-Naruto." Sakura stuttered, her eyes watering.

Sasuke remained silent but not once did he take his eyes of him. He couldn't miss the anguish that was painfully settling onto Naruto's face. He committed it to memory like the massacre. It was his fault after all – he hadn't been strong enough.

Naruto opened his mouth trying again but failing to make a noise.

Unable to meet their eyes, he mimed writing something down.

"I can read lips." Kakashi said softly. Naruto blinked up at him before mouthing 'Thats really cool'.

Kakashi merely smiled sadly under his mask and nodded.

'What happened?' Naruto mouthed, feeling silly. The fact that he couldn't talk hadn't really hit him yet considering just moments ago he thought he had died.

"What happened?" Kakashi supplied letting his visible eye fall onto Sasuke.

"You fell and I think you passed out but then this... this red chakra surrounded you and you rolled until you faced up again and pulled out the senbon from your throat and your heart, the rest just kind of popped out." Sasuke said, having difficulty explaining what happened.

"And thats when Gato showed up." Kakashi continued. "He had about a hundred mercenaries, double crossing Zabuza. He and Haku, as we found out his teammate was," Kakashi made a note to ask Naruto's apparent recognition of the name at a better time, "ceased their assault."

There was a noticable pause and Naruto stopped breathing in suspense.

"Before I could get you out of there," Sasuke continued, "You started... getting up. You were coated in the red chakra and began to kill the mercenaries – even Gato."

Naruto's eyes widened and fisted his hands.

_I don't remember_.

Naruto tried admitting it out loud but still, no noise escaped his person. He could no longer face his teammates. He turned away, clutching his eyes tightly closed.

Wordlessly, Kakashi rose motioning the other two to do the same. Sakura hesitated but with a shake of Kakashi's head, began to follow him out.

Sasuke stood frozen unable to form any kind of words. Instead, he briefly put a hand on Naruto's shoulder before exiting the room.

Naruto was left alone for the rest of the day.

* * *

I don't know what got into me. I thought I was done with posting stories on a whim but clearly I was mistaken.

**Beware the sporadic updates.**


	2. Chapter 2

Naruto hadn't been the one to push himself out of his mind scape but certainly he should be able to go back? He wanted his questions answered.

Yet at the same time he was uncharacteristically frightened. It was hard facing the reality of never talking again.

Naruto had to admit he cried a little and sort of huddled into his futon, desperately trying to remember what had happened after he had been mortally wounded. All it caused was a huge migraine that grew worse as he got a flicker of a memory.

_/The raven haired human was friend. Scent on him. The masked one as well even if a bit faint. He will get rid of the cannon fodder while he healed his wounds. He wouldn't move the body much but his chakra was pure raw power and was enough to kill a few deplorable humans./_

Naruto shook his head before opening his eyes, feeling the slight change in temperature when the sun hit his face. He didn't want to face the day. He wanted to wallow in his misery and self pity. It hurt. His voice was something he used extensively. Especially when he was at home and the loneliness was too much to bear.

_Damn it!_ Naruto cursed in his head and rose from his futon. It was an irritatingly slow process because of his still recuperating heart which made him winded at the slightest effort. Finding a mirror, he removed his shirt, looking for any entrance wounds and only finding tiny little scabbed over circles for scars as evidence of the senbons that had littered his heart. It was the same for his throat but he couldn't seem to stop running a hand over that one specifically.

It didn't seem like much but they were the only evidence of his near death experience along with the loss of his voice.

Naruto stared at his throat for an hour before his stomach growled loudly. Taking deep breaths, he mentally prepared himself for the pitying and guilty looks like the ones from before. He hadn't seen them since and, really, he was glad for the space but there was only so much silence Naruto could take before he really broke down and Naruto wasn't sure he would be able to face his team if they saw him at his most weakest – even more so than they already had.

Another loud rumble from his stomach made Naruto sigh at the inevitable, decided that there was no point in putting it off any longer and opened the door to go get breakfast.

* * *

Give it to a child to be able to cheer him up about his predicament.

The day had been filled with a natural fog (none of that annoying crap that Zabuza used for stealth) and the brief sunlight that had awakened him had been been from a slightly higher position from the sky than the morning warranted which explained why when he had exited the room, the house had been empty save Tsunami and Inari.

"I'm so sorry." Tsunami apologized when she saw him, bowing. Naruto jerked back, ready to yell that it was fine when he remembered that he couldn't and simply shook his head left and right while making an 'x' with his hands.

The motion was lost on her when she was still facing the floor. Instead, Naruto grabbed her by the shoulders and raised her.

Tsunami held her breath, ready for – well, she wasn't actually sure what but some sort of reprimand, which seeing as he could no longer speak, was quite insensitive. Instead, she met Naruto's impossibly blue eyes and found them expressing kindness. They were a little dimmer than before but she still found herself unable to look away and very nearly missed the smile he gave her.

She was speechless and suddenly quite emotional. Tsunami hugged the child that saved their country tightly, tears threatening to fall as they did so.

Naruto wasn't actually quite sure what to do... he'd never actually gotten hugged before. Recounting some of the ones he had seen on TV, Naruto hesitantly wrapped his arms around Tsunami and couldn't stop blushing as he did so.

That was the scene his Team and Tazuna had walked in on.

"Oh! Lunch already?" Tsunami sniffed and wiped her eyes, startling Naruto. He hadn't noticed she had been crying. Seeing his distress, Tsunami smiled and patted his head in a motherly fashion. Naruto was unsure of why but he wouldn't mind her doing it again despite the fact that it made him feel like a child. It sent a rush of warmth that Naruto had never felt before and Naruto was almost glad that he couldn't speak because he would have been speechless anyway.

"What would you like for lunch?" Tsunami asked. Naruto blinked but before he could answer, his Team did it for him.

"Ramen." They said in unison. Naruto slightly smiled, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly.

"Ramen it is then." Tsunami affirmed brightly. She turned away and Naruto was revealed completely.

"How are you feeling, Naruto?" Sakura asked a bit hesitantly. Naruto shrugged and raised his hand in a 'so-so' fashion finding no reason to pretend like he was perfectly fine. Sasuke, mercifully, didn't comment and didn't look all that fazed. Naruto might have been offended or hurt if not for the comfort Sasuke had offered before. Not to mention, if Naruto met Sasuke's eyes he would notice the guilt that plagued him. As it was, he didn't even need to to feel it. Plus, Naruto found solace in Sasuke's non-hovering. Sakura was doing that enough for the rest of them.

"I'm sure some food will make you feel better." Kakashi stated, deciding to help Tsunami with dinner. Tazuna passed them to the refrigerator briefly patting Naruto's shoulder but making no comment.

After a slightly awkward silence, Team 7 ambled to the table sitting around it. The awkward silence continued even after Inari joined them, having smelled the food being prepared. Both Naruto's and Inari's stomach grumbled at the same time.

"When was the last time you ate?" Sakura asked, trying to fill the awkward silence. Naruto raised two fingers.

"You really can't talk anymore?" Inari cut in. Naruto slumped over the table and shook his head no.

"So does that mean you can't be a ninja anymore?"

Naruto jumped at the question, going wide-eyed at the implications.

"Calm down. His voice has nothing to do with his skill." Kakashi said, setting a rather hefty bowl of ramen in front of Naruto. Naruto let out a relieved sigh and didn't even protest to the amount of vegetables Kakashi put in his beef ramen. He swirled them around a bit dejectedly but hunger won out and he began to shovel down his food though with less enthusiasm than his team was used to.

"So there's other ninja out there that can't talk?" Inari asked innocently.

"Most likely." Kakashi answered vaguely but it was enough for Inari.

"So that means you'll get to be the first mute Hokage ever!" Inari asked excitedly. The question made Naruto freeze for a moment, before he swallowed what was in his mouth and stared unseeingly into the broth to contemplate the question.

Would he still be able to become Hokage?

To be Hokage, you had to be able to inspire people with speeches and give out orders – and the politics. Hard to negotiate when you can't talk. Naruto may be a bit dense but when it came to his dream, he made sure to at least know what he was getting himself into.

And without his voice, his chances of becoming Hokage just got slimmer.

But perhaps- maybe he could still do it. The Impossible never stopped him before and now didn't seem like the right time to believe so either. There was something about clinging to a dream that no one believed you could that made Naruto feel alive.

So instead of focusing on the things he wouldn't be able to do, he thought back to Jiji's calming presence, and power that swept through you when he looked straight at you. The Sandaime didn't need words to assure someone that he would take care of them with his strength and Naruto decided that he would to – without words.

So after minutes of silence, most of which he hadn't noticed, Naruto smiled and nodded in assurance.

Nothing would stop him from reaching his dream. Not even the loss of his voice.

* * *

**He wouldn't be Naruto without his determination and ability to achieve the impossible. Apologies for both the wait and length but I hadn't been sure how to convey this right. Plus, I'm technically on hiatus for my Naruto fanfiction which is why I probably got inspiration for this.**

**Hopefully the next chapter won't take forever.**


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